


When The World Slows Down Around You

by lazywriter7



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Agent Maximoff, Assets & Handlers, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Clint Barton, F/M, Handler Clint Barton, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Training, twin feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:14:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3946768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You think you have anything to teach me?" Pietro scoffed, a wonderfully light, contemptuous sound. "I could snatch your arrows out of the air if I fucking chose, outpace your lovely Quinjets if I pushed myself, run <em>circles</em> around you-"</p><p>"Yes, but." Barton affixed that remarkably steady stare on him, the one that burrowed unease into Pietro's spine. "Are you going to run in circles all your life, or do you have an actual destination in mind?"</p><p>Quiet.</p><p>"I'm not here to teach you how to race. I'm here to show you the finishing line."</p><p> SHIELD is on the lookout for powered individuals to join its roster, and the recently-revived Pietro Maximoff is a shoe-in for the job. Overly friendly colleagues and men with metal hands aside- for all of Pietro's arrogance, he still falls victim to the worst cliche that you don't need a SHIELD handbook to determine is a Spectacularly Bad Idea. Falling in love with the handler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The World Slows Down Around You

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly Age of Ultron compliant, with a couple of differences that'll become obvious as the story proceeds. References and usage of characters from Agents of SHIELD, mostly compliant.

The carrier was a low thrum behind her temple.

She was seated on the metal floor- it wasn’t the most comfortable, and there was a steel chair not very far away, but there was something almost soothing about the constant buzz that made its way from the continuously vibrating walls to the inside of her head. It wormed its way in, sweeping like a white haze over the chaos magic that she barely has a reign on even now, over the part of her brainstem that reiterates _dead dead dead_ like a monotonous, pounding drum. Drums in the deep.

He had always hated that book.

He………because he’s always going to be _he_ to her now, forever more; she thought her mind might wash out from the pain if she tried to think his name, he’d ruined it. And it was the mind and not the heart- he had repeated that often enough. Seemed almost disgusted at the general stupidity of the populace: attributing emotions to a piece of muscle that does nothing but pumps blood to every corner of the body. The mind, the brain was the seat of emotions, not the heart, no matter how many lies people told in the name of romanticism. She wondered what he would say if she told him that there’s a growing tightness in her chest right now, a squeezing band around the piece of muscle that doesn’t think, doesn’t feel. Maybe they were mislead by science, like they had been so many times before. Maybe the heart was more than a glorified pump after all.

She had plucked Ultron’s heart right out of its chest, sunk her fingernails into the cloying flesh. But Pietro Maximoff’s heart remained unbeating.

_Dead dead dead dead dead dea-_

Look at that- she’d been right after all. The pain didn’t just wash her out. It blinded her. The magic boiled beneath her flesh, and she gritted her teeth tighter. Her jaw was faintly aching.

She didn’t bother to raise her chin from where it had sunk to her collarbones- she deserved this. This few silent moments of mourning, after the screaming rage of when it had first happened. This was no blow to her dignity. Her fists still firmed up, gone white at the knuckles, bunched as they were on her folded thighs, when the sounds edged closer. It was probably the Captain. She didn’t like him much. He was simultaneously too idealistic, and too used to death.

“Maximoff.”

Tear-clumped lashes stayed still, then flickered open. Wanda’s vision was blurry, but she could still see the one-eyed man clearly. The one who’d turned up with the carrier in the first place, when everything had been going to pieces. The one because of whom everybody on that fucking floating piece of rock wasn’t…wasn’t….

_-d dead dead dead dead dead de-_

_Its just a four letter word._ She told herself, none too steadily. She’d tire of it eventually.

“Maximoff.” The man said again. Wanda felt the urge to plunge inside his brain and pull all the matter out, greasy string by string. And all because of a name. Her name. Only her name, now.

“Fury.” She said, blankly. She did a lot blankly now. She couldn’t muster up much emotion for anything else except training. And even then, the emotion was primarily anger.

The man’s mouth twisted to the side, not very kindly. But not very hostile either. “Only my friends call me that.”

She didn’t reply to that. Of course she knew the title that the man supposedly merited, it was hovering somewhere at the back of her head. But SHIELD was nothing to her.

( _“That’s SHIELD?” Pietro asked, eyes wide, doing a very poor job of disguising the wonder.)_

Guardian angels, fairy godmothers, knights that rode in on white steeds to save the day. She cared for none of that. Hadn’t since she was five. The mass murderer who’d destroyed her life wore a suit of armour. He wasn’t a knight.

“But I suppose that’s the backlash of handing over your job to someone else. Can’t exactly call me Director legitimately now, can you.” Fury withdrew a hand from his trench pocket, placed something on the floor next to her feet. Wanda heard the clink of rolling glass. “Speaking of which. The Director of SHIELD wants to meet you.”

She didn’t quite register the words being spoken. Her eyes had darted to the side, fixating on the little vial that had apparently rolled its way to where her hips were propped against the floor. It was half full, the dark green, oily liquid in it sloshing back and forth, strangely dull under the harsh phosphorescent lighting of the spare room on the carrier. Something in her instinctively recoiled from the innocuous looking fluid, so opaque and slimy on the surface. It might have been the red sparks lighting their way beneath her fingertips.

She picked it up anyway. The glass was strangely warm against her palm.

“What is this?”

Fury didn’t need to straighten. He hadn’t crouched once during their little conversation, to bring his head to the same level as Wanda’s, hadn’t even bent his shoulders. A deeply set, tiny part of her that wasn’t screaming itself hoarse over Pietro appreciated it.

“They say you’re an Avenger now.” Fury raised an eyebrow, and for a split-second, news images of the _Scarlet Witch_ on TV channels flashed across Wanda’s eyelids. He inclined his head to the vial almost imperceptibly. “That’s your salary.”

Her thumb nail scraped across the peeling paper stuck around the base of vial, even as her ears registered the sound of leather shoes walking away. The writing on it was minuscule, almost ant-like. Still better than _his_ calligraphy. She still had to squint to read the words, through gravel from too little sleep, salt from tears and soot from Sokovia clinging to the corner of her lids that would probably never leave.

 _GH.325._  

~

The man with the unassuming smile and balding pate sitting across the massive claw-footed desk, stared at the vial. It was nothing new. He had been staring at it for the past half a minute. Wanda was still waiting.

His thin, almost wiry fingers tightened where they were holding it. For a moment, he almost broke it. For a moment, Wanda almost let him.

 _He_ would have laughed at her, then swept back the locks that had drifted over her temple again and pressed oft-bitten lips to the little wrinkle there. He’d always laughed at her beliefs. The witch that lived in the hollow of the cypress tree that never stopped waving its branches, even when there was no wind, three blocks down from their home. The faeries that feasted on sweet dreams scattered through the night and then danced, danced in manic glee and frenzy across the heavens, meteors streaking across the night sky. Heroes. Superstitions, he’d called them. It was with almost painful smugness that she’d informed him, once her powers manifested, that _she_ was a superstition, now.

“He had another vial. Of course he had another vial. Probably carried it around in his pocket, just in case.”

“I need to go back to training.” Wanda said.

The man met her eyes, over the starched collar bleaching his complexion even whiter, the sheen of sweat demarcating his brow. He didn’t seem like he was putting much effort into it. He didn’t seem like it was a conscious thought at all. The last person who’d done that had made something in Wanda step out to face the rabid monsters that had come to life out of fairytales into the daylight. Had set her on the path of becoming an Avenger. Had been responsible for her baby brother’s heart stopping too soon.

Pietro had always been too fast, too quick to get to places. He’d shoot off into the dust of the alleys scattering their childhood, and she’d gasp and clutch at the stitch in her side, and sulk and whine for him to wait. To let her catch up. He wouldn’t wait. He’d never wait. Why would this time be any different?

( _Because she’d never had to wait so long. Because she’d hear him eventually, breath whistling out of the skinny chest he’d never grown out of, hear him atleast a minute away, then hear him again as he flicked her earlobe from behind and say, ‘Race you again?’)_

There was something her Maman used to say, before the stars fell from the sky, burning and exploding everything they touched- the half-constructed brick pavement she’d skip over every morning, the wardrobe where she kept her finest clothes, two shirts and a dress, painstakingly mended, her Maman’s outstretched hands- and they’d found out that science had lied again, that the stars were not made out of swirling gases, but metal and gunpowder with rich men’s names branded across them like they were trophies to be bragged. Her Maman’s voice had faded with time, dwindled into the cobwebs of memory like everything old did, but the words remained. Something about how the key to introducing yourself was knowing that you were a stranger, that you didn’t matter to the person standing in front of you, not yet, so you had to _say_ things that would matter. To them. That every introduction had to be tailored to the person you were giving it to, because you were different things to different people, but you had to matter.

This man seemed to know it, without ever having known her Maman, because he didn’t bother offering his name. He came down to it directly, saying the only thing that would matter right now.

“I came back from the dead.”

And there it was again, just when she’d thought she managed to leave it behind. The thrice-accursed word. _Dea-_

A crimson ball of energy burned its way past the space that the man had been occupying not seconds ago. It left a flaming hole in his leather chair. The man raised his head from where he’d flattened his cheek against the desk, and Wanda couldn’t muster the wherewithal to inflect something in her voice. There was definitely something flowing through her veins- too hot for anger, too pure for fury, too cold for hurt, something red and stabbing and solely _hers_ , something that itched to release the reigns and let her skin explode, the world with it. It would finish what the Stark bomb had started, what Ultron had pushed along when it had railed bullets on a dusty Sokovian pavement.

“How dare you.” Her words said, and maybe once she’d have cared that they sounded more…..devoid, than anything Ultron or whatever else laid claim to the label of life these days had ever said.

He looked up at her, and the panic that had risen at the back of his eyes once he’d sealed them upon the vial, seemed to fade. It almost seemed like he’d come to a decision. A judgement. Wanda only didn’t kill him because he wasn’t the man she was out to wreak vengeance on. Because Pietro had died a fucking hero and she couldn’t disgrace that. And it was excruciating to pick what stung more- that her brother had been capable of it and she’d never noticed, or that he’d somehow morphed into one of those painted heroes he loved deriding, in the short minutes that he’d been separated from her.

( _But time flowed too slow for him, and she’d always said that he lived a million lifetimes in everybody’s one.)_

The man straightened, as if the back of his suit jacket wasn’t pressing against empty air and abnormally hot leather right now. He placed his right hand over his left, perfectly arranged upon the desk, and almost sounded calm. “T.A.H.I.T.I. A SHIELD program used to revive a fallen Avenger. It uses a drug synthesised from alien biology- GH.325- and involves memory overwriting and manipulation, in addition to almost intolerable pain. It was used successfully on only two people and……” A slight, almost unnoticeable grimace. “There were side effects.”

A bird hooted outside the window, horrifically mundane. Wanda didn’t feel much else, except a distinct tinge of something coating the back of her tongue much like resignation.

( _After two days had passed watching the bomb, hunger cramping their bellies, underwear stained with the piss they weren’t able to contain- they had escaped, for a definition of it. Emerged into a world where nothing was taller than they were, dust was more abundant than air, and they’d spent three weeks scanning the rubble for a familiar, still-breathing face. Scraped enough money to get by, and spent another three years tracing down every Maximoff in the country. Hope killed worse than American weapons.)_

“I’m ready to try everything.” She said, and was well aware of the difference between everything and anything. Everything meant she’d never stop, she’d cross all items off the list, and come up with more yet to add. Everything meant even three decades might not be enough, this time.

There was just one exception to everything. Hope.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to try that yet.

“I’m imagining…..” The man started, then folded his fingers into themselves. ‘Imagining’ probably meant ‘pretty damn sure’, for him. “That Fury wants to use you as a conduit. If you took the drug, somehow managed to feed your powers through him…….we could probably spare him the pain. Leave the memories.”

Spare him the pain, she didn’t even have to realise, didn’t quite mean the same as spare her.

“Pain is not a problem.” She said, and the man smiled up at her, like one of those smiles adults give when they remember how stupid they’d been as children. Like she’d reminded him of a saying he’d used to favour quite some time ago, and had discarded somewhere along the way.

“Yes.” He said, and it was easy to read the wry twist to his lips. “It hardly ever is. Until it _is_.” Something in the way he said it led one to think that he didn’t mean it as ‘pain is a problem’. More of ‘pain _is’_ , it exists, and how very few people come to be aware of its real existence in their lifetimes.

Wanda turned, and left. Not before she saw the guilt writ across the man’s features, guilt sharp enough to bring kings to their knees, but she didn’t bother to spare the remorse for it. Maybe he felt guilty for having to help her. He knew he’d feel guiltier for not doing it.

Because Wanda had never needed this particular lesson. Not ever since she’d plunged her hand into a monster’s chest and clawed out his heart.

Pain is.

 

 

 

 

 

Contrary to expectation, Pietro Maximoff wasn’t incapable of remaining still.

He didn’t live life in fast forward. He saw it in slow motion most of the time- the gossamer thin, grey stretch of a fly’s wing batting languidly in the air, the dust motes magnified and resolved a thousand times drifting down in the glazy sunlight, his sister’s breath before she exhaled magic- the hitching, the slow, inexorable rise of the chest fateful inch by inch, the red building under the skin before it oozed crimson slowly, so slowly, sparks digging out from her pores and alighting into the air. He saw things that most didn’t, or didn’t care to see: the rain separated into its infinitely many drops, each perfectly spherical at the bottom and tapered into a point at the top, the pollen shivering on the petals an instant before they’d take to the air with a gust of wind, a wave of refracting gold rising from the fields of sunflowers back home, each individual fleck of foam when the sea waves crashed against the Sokovian rocks in massive white sprays. He watched for seconds stretched out into eternities and it was always an exercise of will, to slow running and snap the eyes away.

Which was why he watched now, suspended somewhere between fog and daylight, eye whites peering out through slitted eye lids, watched the drop cling to the tapered curl of black lashes. They rose up and down, fluttering, but the drop wouldn’t fall- and Pietro kept watching until his body felt less alien, useless conglomeration of bone and muscle laid out on a metal slab, until clarity grew stronger and stronger and he possessed the wherewithal to twitch the (the? his? ) thumb lying weakly on a set of knuckles.

The drop fell. Eyes rose to fix widely on his and Pietro felt himself snap back into consciousness.

Her eyes were wide, wider than they’d ever been, set into a pair of dark, sunken hollows- but Pietro registered none of that. He was caught by the web that crawled across her irises, a criss-crossing, etched pattern of crimson cracks on brown glass, like lava making its way beneath cool ground. His lips were numb, tongue useless, mouth lax and unable to voice the words that were frantically building up at the base of his throat- _what did you do what did you do **what did you do** \- _so he stared and Wanda stared back and he was aware, in the most distant manner, of the little dark room in which they were ensconced, the vibration beneath his back, the lights scorching down from the ceiling, the steadily building heat under their entwined fingers.

“Not.” Wanda said, and she began shaking, a continuously building set of shudders that began working their way through her frame and Pietro _burned_ , every scrap of will pushed into a demented struggle to speak, move, _anything dammit_ , but the fucking muscles wouldn’t cooperate, body still not his own. “N-n-n-n-no-…no…n-not..” The syllables spilled and spilled and Wanda’s jaw wouldn’t stop clacking, wracking breaths heaved out through shuddering teeth, and every image of past helplessness flashed across Pietro’s eyelids- her terrified frame crouched next to his, bugs under a bed, scrunched shoulders pressing into his own as they watched the bomb, her spine arched to breaking point as he screamed because the scientists wouldn’t know when to _leave it be, stop the fucking experiments, enough for the day, you’re hurting her dammit_ , her scream echoing in his ears from miles away when he felt lead slam into his guts on a dusty Sokovian pavement. Clarity was overpriced, because now that he could think, his thoughts were trapped in an unresponsive shell, turning and twisting into a tumultuous gibberish of _please please let me just let me I have to please fucking please-_

“Not.” Wanda whispered, so, so terrified. Her head leaned forward, blocking out the harsh lights, dark, straggly hair brushing his cheeks. Their hands were burning. “Not dead. Not dead.”

Pietro leaned his head back, feeling life flicker into his lips- and felt a burst of relief so strong that wetness creeped past his lids. He slurred, and brushed her knuckle with his (his his _his_ ) thumb again and again, in a diminutive motion that would have to be enough until he could fling his arms around her shoulders, cradle her head in his lap and rock her to sleep, like that first night in the middle of the dust and rubble of a burning country. “Not dead.”

 

~

 

Papers rustled in the hallway. Out of the corner of his vision, he could see an elegant finger curl around the edge of a document, crease and flip in a wonderfully brisk motion.

“You should read this.”

Clint sealed his eyes tighter and leaned back, kicking one leg over the other. The chair creaked threateningly against his weight.

“I know you can see me.”

Clint didn’t give her the courtesy of opening his eyes. He folded his arms behind his head, chin raised high. “Off active duty.”

“You keep on repeating that as if it’s a miracle phrase-“

Clint imparted added effect by folding his lips into the thinnest of lines. “ _Off_ active _duty_.”

A light scoffing sound. “Like that ever mattered to SHIELD.”

Clint raised a finger. It wasn’t his middle. He was being polite. “SHIELD doesn’t technically exist.”

“Which is kind of the ultimate achievement for a super-secret spy organisation.”

“And this spy is _retired_ , thank you very much, status non-negotiable with possible exceptions for Fury’s eyepatch and a couple of gift vouchers from Home Shoppe.”

Blurry, corner-of-the-mostly-closed-eye vision afforded an image of Natasha lifting the edge of a paper from the thin stack and raising an eyebrow. “How about a Level Seven security clearance?”

Clint could feel his eyebrows flying up to his hairline despite himself. SHIELD was notoriously stingy about raising security clearances, especially for operatives like him and Natasha who made it a Friday night hobby to wander into hostile situations and enemy bases. It didn’t matter how good you were, there was always a torture technique better than you. “They’re raising our clearances?”

“Your clearance.” Natasha corrected, and Clint felt his brows clouding. They’d been collaborating on missions together so long now, he couldn’t remember the last time they’d been raised levels without each other. Rare occasion as it was, it was usually Natasha. The last time Clint had had a higher security clearance than her, he’d been bringing the Black Widow in.

Natasha seemed hardly fazed though. “And a summons from the Director of SHIELD. My my Barton, today’s your lucky day. They actually seem to _want_ you.”

“I’ve never submitted to bribes in my life.” But Clint straightened up all the same, lids flying open, pulling the papers toward him. This was……curious. Nothing that could coax him out of the well-deserved break from SHIELD and superheroes overtaking his life…….but curious.  

“Bring me a classified file.” Natasha said, fluttering her eyelashes, a tone in which a normal woman might say, ‘bring me some flowers.’ Clint spared the groaning chair its misery and stood up, the wooden legs settling back onto the floor with a thud.

“For you, dearheart, I’ll bring an entire drawer.”

~

 It wasn’t like he was completely clueless.

Steve probably visited the grave with flowers every Sunday. Or signed trading cards. Tony……Tony might have had entire programme sub-routines, maybe even a baby bot named after The Agent. Bruce didn’t know the man but might remember him in quiet moments, Thor was sharper and more knowing than he seemed, but didn’t say anything.

He and Natasha…….they were born in the system. Born and bred and inoculated. They knew how SHIELD worked. Though they never discussed it……they guessed. Fury wasn’t in direct charge, Hill was playing nice with the private sector, Hand was dead in the Hydra surge. Gonsalez……..well. Clint had been hiding behind Gonsalez till now. But he’d always known the man was too idealistic to head an organisation that was less of a guardian angel, a protective shield, and more of a spider crouching in the dark, silently weaving its webs. Sure, the webs were meant to save you when you inevitably fell. But. But.

“Agent Barton.”

“Sir.”

So it wasn’t a complete crash out of nowhere to see Phil Coulson, Clint’s first and only handler, one of the best men he knew, sitting in the chair of the Director. Coulson had been bred in the system too. It wasn’t his fault that Clint expected better.

There was silence in the room for a while after that, even though the man Clint knew never used silence as a tactic, intimidation, interrogation or otherwise. Silence had always been……comfortable, for them. A rush of static in the comms, waiting patiently for the signal. The quiet of a conference room, only interrupted by the scritch-scratch of paperwork. The silence in the moments leading to a shot, and after.

Clint cleared his throat a little. “You called for me?”

Phil looked up at him, something almost like befuddlement tinting his features. That, coupled with the fact that Clint had never seen the man look so…….tentative about something, made him think, fleetingly, almost longingly, of an LMD. Wishful thought, past-Phil would have said, smiling. Wondered what it said about him that he was wishing for his miraculously-back-from-the-dead friend to be a fake.

Phil cleared his expression, efficiently, proving he wasn’t an LMD after all, and slipped into the official-matters tone of voice. “Congratulations on the battle in Sokovia.”

“Thank you, sir.” Clint replied. _Congratulations on not being dead. I’d have brought you a card, but I don’t think Hallmark does those._

Phil’s lips curve. A smile, tighter than the ones he’s ever given Clint. “I understand we have new powered individuals on the roster.”

“The Captain and the Black Widow are doing a fine job whipping them into shape.” Not Cap. Not Nat. They’re talking in an official capacity here. Clint doesn’t forget that easily.

“Which brings me to why you’re here. While……..running SHIELD for these past days-“ Year. Clint doesn’t forget. “I’ve come to realise that while the Avengers are undoubtedly important and very skilled, they’re also a last resort. Most of the times, everyday agents venture into hostile situations to investigate before the Avengers are called. Most of the time, they aren’t. Of late, regular SHIELD teams have been facing…..challenges, that they aren’t always equipped for. So I want to have a team, made up of individuals with more…..specialised skills, to go into places that we can’t send normal teams without heavy casualties.”

( _“Strike team Delta.” Clint repeats dubiously. “Made up of an ex-Soviet assassin and a bow-touting carnie.”_

_Phil nods. He looks very young. “People with specialised skill sets. To reach places, complete objectives, that are considered impossible by entire legions of operatives. Beyond and above the normal.”)_

“With all due respect sir, I’m off active duty.” Clint crossed, and re-crossed his hands behind his back. Paused, and said it. “And I haven’t been a part of your team for a very long time.”

Phil’s throat worked. He didn’t smile this time. “Accepted, Agent Barton. I actually have an eye on a particular individual. To be trained as a regular agent, not an Avenger. At least at first. Handle challenges that are a little less high profile, but none the less dangerous.”

“I’m……..unsure where I come into this, sir.”

“As….you might be aware, handling of such individuals takes…..delicacy.” Phil glanced at the window, seemingly scoping the sunlight seeping in. Clint had never known him to so thoroughly avoid eye contact before, especially while giving essential information. “The individual in question has well documented distrust of authority. Of any power higher than him, actually. The handler needs to be a special mix of carefulness and sincerity, compassion and command. It’s not an easy job. Most can’t do it. They give up.”

Quiet. “I know sir.”

Phil looked back at him. The smile seemed…..not easier, but a little more genuine. “I was hoping you’d be up for the task.”

Clint’s mouth felt dry. He swallowed once, but saliva seemed to be in short supply. The room was bright with sunshine, but everything seemed to be very…..heavy, all of a sudden. “No offence to your judgement, sir. But.” His tongue darted out to the fissures in his lips, licking a little compulsively. His breath was very, very tight. “I’m not you.”

Phil’s lips curved further up, quiet and warm, and for a blessed second it was like nothing had changed at all. “As paradoxical as it may seem Agent Barton, but. For an organisation that breeds spies and imposters, SHIELD has never required its agents to be anything more, or other, than what they already are.” A little shuffling of the papers beside his elbow. “And if it’s any reassurance, you apparently have a history of….successful interactions, with this particular candidate. I think you’re worthy of the job.”

His breath could have been steadier. Clint couldn’t bring himself to care. He stood a little taller. “Thank you sir.”

Silence. Phil uncapped and re-capped the gold-plated pen lying on the messy sheaf of papers. _Click._

“How’s Phillip?”

Clint didn’t blink. “Doing well. Won a kite-flying competition last month.”

_Click. Click._

“Am I dismissed sir?”

“Yes.” Phil replied, too quickly. Clint turned on his heels. A harsh, stuttered intake of breath. “Wait. W…..wait.”

Clint turned to look over his shoulder.

“Is there anything I….I can….” Phil’s thumb dug relentlessly against the long protrusion of the pen-cap, bending it out of shape. A little more force, and it would snap. “Anything you’d like to-“

Clint cut him off. He wasn’t cruel, and this was Phil. “I would have liked to know that I hadn’t been responsible for the death of the man who brought me on the straight and narrow, and set my life on track. Preferably three years ago. Sir.”

An exhale. “I’m sorry, Clint.”

“Apology accepted sir.” Clint took three steps, ducked his head through and closed the door behind him. Took another step away from the Director of SHIELD’s office and wondered what Phil had been expecting. Accusations? Anger? Beating on chests accompanied by tears? Clint had shed all the tears he had to give on an empty coffin three years ago. He was professional. He was a SHIELD agent. He didn’t blame Agent Coulson, now Director, for making the hard calls, following protocol.

It wasn’t the man’s fault that Clint had expected better from Phil, that’s all.

   

 

**Author's Note:**

> 'Drums in the deep' is yes, a clarification for the philistine, an LOTR reference.
> 
> Updates will be sporadic, but kudos and comments motivate me. Please tell me if you liked :D


End file.
